The college is launching a new system this fall for faculty to report and catalog their activities. The cloud-based system is called Faculty Success and will initially be used to generate the annual CALS Faculty Activity Reports (FAR) which are used for performance evaluation, merit raises, and post-tenure reviews.

Historically, each department has provided its own format or template for its faculty members to use to create their FARs. These inconsistencies made it impossible to compare faculty activity across departments, or to collect meaningful data on faculty activities. In addition, without a standard system to collect information, it is very difficult to ensure faculty are being assessed based on common information.

Faculty Success, a product of Watermark (formerly known as Digital Measures), is a modern tool for faculty members to keep track of and report on annual activities, including research, instruction, Extension and outreach, mentorship, and service activities. The system can generate information required for promotion and tenure documentation, merit compensation exercises, CVs, data for web profiles, bios and more. Six other schools/colleges on the UW-Madison campus use Faculty Success, and some have been using this for many years.

Each faculty member will be responsible for entering and managing their own data. For the first year, faculty will be asked to enter their activities for calendar year 2024 (though individuals can choose to enter more historic data). Data entry must be completed by Monday, January 13, 2025.

Current CALS faculty members can login to Faculty Success by clicking here or using the short link go.wisc.edu/calsfs. Login with your NetID and password, and authenticate via Duo like you do with many other applications every day.

Training materials and resources can be found at admin.cals.wisc.edu/offices/hr/facultysuccess.